BEIJING: Chinese consumers have again shown their huge spending power, taking advantage of the country’s planned support package for spurring tourism, ensuring holiday delivery, and encouraging cultural fairs to boost holiday spending.
Experts say the eight-day holiday is expected to become an “unprecedented” peak season for consumption and that the bustling start to the Year of the Dragon will pave the way for economic development throughout the new year despite emerging headwinds.
Official data shows that China has registered over 3.5 billion passenger trips during the first 17 days of this year’s Spring Festival travel rush, which began on January 26, and the number is expected to reach 9 billion during the ongoing travel rush, likely hitting a new high.
Traditionally, Chinese people tended to stay home with their family members for the Spring Festival. But many families are now opting to travel during the holiday, attracted by cultural activities, such as lantern shows, flower markets and temple fairs around the country, or traveling overseas.
Fliggy, a leading online travel platform, shows that the number of domestic travel reservations during the Spring Festival has increased significantly, and holiday tourism has exceeded that of 2019. Meanwhile, the number of outbound travel bookings rose more than 15-fold compared with the same period last year, close to the level of 2019.
Data from Ctrip Travel also shows that many scenic spots across the country began to embrace swarms of tourists on the first day of the Spring Festival. For instance, ticket orders for scenic spots in Hebei, Henan, Shandong, and Shanxi provinces increased more than 15-fold. Meanwhile, ticket bookings for Luoyang, an ancient city in central China’s Henan Province, increased 35-fold year-on-year.
“I had planned to see the pandas at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding but had to abandon the idea since we didn’t book in advance and the ticket had sold out on the day,” a white-collar worker based in Beijing surnamed Gu told CGTN on Monday.
Another female tourist surnamed Wan told CGTN that she and her family went to South Korea to celebrate the Spring Festival because her family members felt it was a good time to travel abroad with the COVID-19 pandemic being over.
Families like the Wans are not alone, as China’s outbound tourism is showing a vigorous upward tide. A recent Oxford Economics report forecasts the number of international outbound trips taken by Chinese travelers in 2024 will roughly double relative to 2023, bouncing back to nearly 80 percent of 2019 volumes. And about 250,000 Chinese tourists are expected to visit Thailand during this year’s Spring Festival holiday, three times more than in 2023, according to Chanapan Kaewklachaiyawuth, vice president of the Thai Chinese Tourism Alliance Association. –Agencies
